Learn with Play at Home: DIY Party Decorations

For my son's first birthday we had a Very Hungry Caterpillar Party. (So fun!)

Below are some of the simple, inexpensive party decorations that I made for this party, however, you can also use them for other themed (or non-themed) parties too.

Just choose your own colours!

DIY POP-HOLDER

A "pop holder" is really easy to make and is a cute way to display your lolly pops, cake pops and anything else you can think of on a stick :)

Here is how we made ours:

Materials:

Foam block (note: I used flower foam this time as I already had it at home and they were wrapped sweets and no food was touching it.. but to make another, I'd use a normal foam block as you wouldn't want any of the flower foam touching any food),
Glue,
Bento grass dividers (you can buy them online, eg. ebay or shops selling Bento supplies eg. Daiso, very inexpensively)

Starting at the top, put a layer of grass dividers around your foam block. Once you have gone all the way around, start a new layer, slightly lower down so that it overlaps the top layer and so on until it is covered.

On top I stuck down some more of the grass dividers, leaving gaps for the pop sticks to push easily into

Poke in your pops and you're ready to go.

Paper Lantern Table Display/Paper Lantern Caterpillar

Materials:

Paper lanterns (can be bought cheaply on ebay or at many discount variety shops),
Fishing line,
Self adhesive Hooks (I used Command Clear Decorating Clips).

This was such a simple yet effective way to frame our cake and you could do the same for any other party using different coloured lanterns (without the eyes, etc.).

We popped some stick-on wall hooks on the ceiling. Tied fishing line to the paper lanterns and then hung them on the hooks at the desired lengths.

The total cost of the lantern caterpillar was $12.
(I already had the other stuff at home so only had to purchase the lanterns)

Twisted Streamer Wall